medwards1

I have not read any other reviews on here, but seeing the overall rating I can imagine there will be a lot of whinging.

I would imagine the moaning comes primarily for two reasons:

Firstly, I imagine big fans of the books will be mad that it doesn't fit exactly their perception of those books, and especially I guess, that Sherlock displays feelings and such.

For me, I have never been a big fan of the books, and only really know the characters because of their endless repeated representation in film and TV.

If you want portrayals of Sherlock more accurate to the books I suggest watching the old Basil Rahbone films. But if this is your primary concern, then you have somewhat missed the entire point of the film. As the title should suggest to you, this is a film about his sister, Enola. I am sure this is another bone of contention with the diehards. I have no idea if Enola was a character in the books or not, personally never heard of her before, so I imagine perhaps not, but to be honest, it doesn't really matter. By this stage there have been so very many versions of Sherlock Holmes presented to us on screen, I am sure that every single aspect of the characterisation of him from the novels has been bent if not broken before.

Secondly, I imagine there are a lot of people moaning at the very idea a film should have a positive and affirmative role for a young woman. I am sure there are middle aged men with skin the hue of finely glazed gammon frothing at the mouth at the perceived 'wokeness' of this film (and probably badly disguising this angst with negative comments about acting etc).

My view is that everyone needs role models, and if you don't know that this was a time period with particularly feisty and proactive feminist icons striving to make their way in varied 'male dominated' positions in society, then shame on you. This is a film that presents such a character. Educated and emboldened by a mother who said 'to hell with what society expects of us' this is a young woman who is on a quest to find herself, more than her mother, and although at the beginning she does not know what she wants, she very much knows what she does not want.

I personally found Mille Bobby Brown utterly brilliant in this film. Perfect comedy timing, really good acting and a sense of purpose behind her role, borne no doubt out of her executive producer role in its production. She held our attention throughout, and created an interesting and inspiring character. Also, I must say, despite the push against the convention of how Sherlock is usually played, I really loved Henry Cavill in his role, and his scenes with Mille were some of the very best in the film.

The films action was well paced and entertaining, and I ended feeling happy and smiling, like an old favourite Disney film.

All in all I felt, for someone like my niece, or my younger female cousins, this film would be one of the best things ever made. For me, a man in his forties, I would give it a very solid 8 out of 10, and I hope we get to see more of this exciting character in future film projects.

I'll be honest, I am not the biggest Star Wars fan.

Don't get me wrong, I love the original three movies, but, to be honest, when I was a kid, I really rather preferred Indiana Jones for pure entertainment, and in terms of science fiction, I thought Star Trek was better.

The older I got, the more I came to love the original films, especially the Empire Strikes Back which is dark perfection. However, those memories have been repeatedly tainted by The Prequels, and more recently the new main series, and Han Solo, which was nice but without point from my perspective. The only thing I have really enjoyed apart from the original trilogy was Rogue One. I guess if you disagree with me, by this point, and are a massive fan or all of it, or those things I don't like, you will probably no longer care what I have to say.

This is quite simply brilliant. It captures the fun and the darkness of the original films, each episode is mercifully short in a time when TV series sometimes force us to watch hour and a half episodes, and so far everything in it has been spot on for me.

Yes, it is obvious it works almost exactly like a computer game (as I believe it was originally planned to be) and I guess some people could moan it is obvious what is going to happen, but there is a joy in watching it unfold that is unrivalled in most other modern TV.

There are some stellar performances (Werner Herzog oozing his unique brand of insane menance, Nick Nolte managing to make a CGI face still seemed grizzled by many, many years of existence, and the stuntwoman turned actor from Haywire, who has clearly honed her acting technique since that interesting but rough film) but the acting award needs to go to Pedro Pascal who manages to convey so much emotion and character despite wearing a silly helmet all the time and not speaking too much.

If, like me, you have always liked the original three films, but are not a massive fan of it all, and you are tired of the current slew of films, give this a go, I reckon like me, you will love it to bits.

Scorsese brings us a last (probably) nostalgic jaunt into his old familiar territory with some old (kinda) familiar faces. From the very start of the film you are reminded of the echoes of all the great gangster films Marty has brought us before.

We begin with a long slow tracking shot, instantly calling up visions of the one from Goodfellas. However, whilst in that film the shot is there to show the wide-eyed surprise of Lorraine Bracco's character as she is seduced into the life of being a mobsters wife as she is swept along into the glamorous side of the life of crime and the headiness of power, here, in The Irishman (or rather I Heard you Paint Houses) the shot is there to show the inevitability of life spiralling into its final conclusion.

This is, at its heart, a story about ages and about aging. This is a story seeped in the fact all the principle people involved in making it are well into their seventies. This is not to say the film is slow or lacking energy, but rather measured, well-paced, doing everything it needs to do without being rushed. This is a mature film.

That our lead character and narrator the titular Irishman (De Niro) is first shown sitting on his own in a nursing home (retirement community as Tony Soprano would have forcefully corrected) works in a few ways. It sets up he is a survivor; he has outlasted all the other characters in this story. He is alone; everyone he loved is either now dead (often at his hand) or has disowned him. As he begins to relate the story we switch from non-diegetic voice over to diegetic articulation; this emphasises a key concept that undercuts the whole movie, the idea of the unreliable narrator. At first we assume he is talking to someone, maybe a cop, maybe a journalist, maybe a priest, out of shot. Much later we see a wider angle of where he is sat, that heavily suggests he is relating this story to no one, talking to himself, in what could very much be the confused ramblings of an old man. How much of what he tells us is true, dreamed or made up or even misremembered? Unlike his other gangster films, there is no contradictory or complimentary (depending on how you view it) commentary from another character. Also, because everyone else in the story is dead, there is no one left to gainsay his story, we are asked to trust him, or not.

The body of the movie covers familiar territory for a Scorsese gangster film, an account of how an outsider came to be integral to a crime family and their criminal operations across the span of several decades. A rags to riches and back to rags tale (although age and death is the leveller this time instead of arrest, being a rat or universal paranoia and distrust). We have several moments that echo earlier gangster films (such as the car bomb in Casino) but I won't dwell on those as it is more fun discovering them yourself.

This is not an absolute masterpiece, it is not quite to the level of a Taxi Driver, a Goodfellas, a Casino or a Wolf of Wallstreet, however, it is still significantly better than almost every other gangster film you could chose to watch. If you are a Scorsese fan you are richly rewarded for your knowledge of how Marty makes a film, if you are a stranger to films by this director, well, where have you been? Painting houses?

The best thing I can say about this film is, even though it is long, I wanted to watch it again right from the beginning once I had finished it, and the only reason I didn't is it was already nearly two in the morning.

I finally got around to watching Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, and was richly rewarded.

Tarantino is an odd fellow, from my perspective, he entered the world of film with such a bang, and initially could seem to do no wrong with his unique brand of ultra-violence, whip-smart dialogue, great ensemble casts (often resurrecting floundering careers of formerly popular actors) cool nostalgic soundtracks, and mastery of post-modern intertextual references to pop culture that often became pop culture themselves. His first three films were as near to provocative perfection and for me as it is possible to be, culminated in his best film to date, in my humble opinion, Jackie Brown.

Tarantino then took self-reflective, introspective self-indulgence to the ultimate extreme in the utterly ridiculous Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2. To many it was a bridge too far, to me it was one of the funniest things I had seen at the cinema. Still, even though I enjoyed it at the cinema, unlike his other previous work I rarely watched it again even though I bought it on DVD.

Then, with Grindhouse, although enjoyable, the fake trailers were the best thing about the whole project. Inglorious Basterds was hit and miss, some great sequences, some that I cannot even remember now, and once again, even though I own a copy, I have never rewatched it.

Django Unchained was excellent, and I was really glad I went to see it at the cinema, but once again I have not rewatched it since the first time, and for me, although it had some bright points, the Hateful Eight seemed like one long in-joke that I didn't get, and especially a waste of 70mm print given that most of it happens in a cabin.

So, to be honest, I have been underwhelmed with most of Tarantino's output since Jackie Brown. Perhaps this is unfair, none of the films I have mentioned are bad, in any way, but given I know just how good Tarantino can be (as proved by his first three films) I couldn't help but feel disappointed each time I watched one.

So, to be honest, I was not expecting much of this. I was totally blown away. Other reviewers who saw it earlier than I did have outlined much of the details about plot and post-modern references to film and TV cultural products, so I won't dwell too much on that stuff.

For me this is a film about what Hollywood was originally famed for being; a factory of dream and fantasy. That this is set at the true end of the Hollywood studio system and the beginning of a time when most of the big Hollywood studios started to be owned by other much bigger multi-national conglomerates whose primary source of income might be selling tires, or soft drinks or insurance etc, and therefore the importance of Hollywood film production to those companies was significantly less than it had ever been. 1969 was a time when that original dream was being carved up and sold to the highest bidder.

It was a perfect fertile ground for rebels of all sorts; directors, producers, owners of pornographic magazines, actors, musicians, artists and cult leaders...

Every significant character in this film is most typified by their dreams, fantasies and hopes. Rick Dalton (DiCapprio) dreams of recapturing his faded star-status, and of giving a good performance (as well as dreaming about what might have been had he got his big break instead of Steve McQueen). Cliff Booth (Pitt, with a name that is perhaps partly a reference to the terrifying villain in David Lynch's neo-noir masterpiece Blue Velvet, especially given the rumours of how he might have killed his wife and gotten away with it) dreams of actually being significant in some way (fantasising about handing Bruce Lee his own arse in a fight during down-time on a shoot; yeah, right!) Sharon Tate (Robbie) dreams of living the dream of Hollywood, of truly making it and being famous and adored (her disappointment at not being recognised at the theatre when she goes to see her own film, and her delight at the audience reacting to her on screen) her star is rising as Dalton's fades. The Manson 'family' dream of changing the world.

In reality, maybe all of their dreams are facile, without hope of coming true, and ultimately unsatisfying if they did...but then again, this is a fairy tale. They all get a (kinda) happy ending.

As pointed out by other reviewers on here, this film works best if you know about the violence and murders committed by the Manson 'family' that lead to the death of the heavily pregnant Sharon Tate.

It makes the final section incredibly and uncomfortably tense, in a masterful demonstration of Tarantino's power as a director. I was becoming so tense watching the end of the film, that I felt compelled to jabber nervously at my wife the sequence of events of that fateful night before we see them happen on screen (even though she is fully aware of them). When suddenly Tarantino starts altering history, it comes as such a relief to the tension built up that the violence Pitt and his Bull dish out comes as a glorious, euphoric release, I laughed so hard I think those around me thought I had lost my mind. It was such a lifting of the anticipation of knowing what is about to happen, that the otherwise horrific ultra-violence seen in graphic detail on screen becomes almost hilarious...and I think that is entirely the point. For a split second Tarantino allows us, in revelling in the fantasy punishment of Manson's puppets, to share a small sense of what they might have been feeling in their twisted acts that fateful night, whilst at the same time allowing us to metaphorically wash our hands of the guilt of exalting in such violence because, after all, the bad guys are getting punished here and the good guys are given a fantasy second chance at continued existence.

That it is the same trick he used in Ingloious Basterds is entirely the point, it is signposted to us massively in the clip from Rick Dalton's trashy film shown earlier which replicates the use of a flame thrower to kill Nazis, the fact he still has the flamethrower in his tool shed which we also see earlier, and the fact that Brad Pitt was in both history-bending films.

One of the things that I couldn't stop thinking about is the notable absences from this film. Firstly, Charlie Manson, although he is seen very briefly, is conspicuous by his absence, but his imprint is very definitely felt (once again especially if you know some of the background of his cult) and so too is Tarantino, not popping up in his usual cameo role, and also not stamping this film with his usual brand of razor-sharp dialogue, constant ultra-violence etc. It occurs to me that Tarantino could be drawing a comparison between himself and Manson, Manson famed for manipulating and controlling others, and directing them from a distance to take part in acts of horrendous violence and torture, and so too, as a film director, does Tarantino. Their purposes might be different, and their canvas might be different, Tarantino uses the artistic expression of film making, Manson used people in an evil and warped perversion of artistic expression. Here his ludicrous motivation to his followers 'do something witchy' is given the derision it deserves, and burned at the stake...well, pool.

And if the Manson 'family' dreamed of changing the course of history, well, in this film they got that wish, although perhaps not in the way they intended. And in the end this film has the ultimate fairy tale ending, a happy dream that everything ended okay, and that the '70s wasn't born in quite the same violent and horrible way it was in reality. Instead Tate gets to carry on her career, presumably saving Polanski from his own self-destructive sexual exploits (some sort of hidden message for Weinstein there, perhaps?), Dalton gets to be the star of his own story, use his skill set (limited though it is) and make friends with his neighbours and Pitt gets to finally be someone worth talking about, and proves his value as a man, a human, a friend.

I will, as I have done with everything else he has made, be purchasing this (albeit on Blu Ray this time) and this time, I will definitely be watching it again and again.

Joker is not your typical superhero action sci-fi fantasy spectacular, which, given it is (perhaps) an origin story of a super villain is entirely appropriate. Thank goodness.

There is nothing wrong with big dumb superhero action movies, and indeed some of the (unending) stuff churned out by Marvel(Disney), and even D.C.(Warner) manages to elevate itself above the dumb category and even has something important/artistic to say.

However, we are now deep in the over-saturation mire, and personally I am not sure how much more superhero spectacle films I can take. The last film of this ilk I bothered to go and see at the cinema before Joker was Thor: Ragnarok, and I absolutely loved it, and decided to bow out on a high, I promised myself it was the last superhero film I was going to pay money to go and see.

Then I saw the trailers for Joker. This is a film that is, at its heart, is a character study, and a character study against the backdrop of a lack of social services and mental health support, a great chasm of inequality between rich and poor, with a central character who is clearly in desperate need of exactly that kind of help.

You can take this film one of several ways.

******************************SPOILERS ALERT*******************************

1) It is a film about a character who, without the help he needs and deserves, descends into an inescapable spiral of mental instability leading to extreme violence and inspiring riotous rage around him against the wealthy citizens of society, who seem to neither care or worse, actively exploit people like him.

2) It is a clever re-imagining of some of finest work of Martin Scorsese (particularly Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy and After Hours) in such a way as to ensure that the (still very pertinent) messages of those films are conveyed to a youthful audience that might otherwise not watch those excellent films.

3) The greater majority of what we see in the film takes place in the mind of the lead character, who, as we have seen before in The Dark Knight, is economical with the truth about his own origin story, although in this case perhaps this is done to weave a sympathetic web for himself to ensnare the psychiatrist examining his case so that he might kill her and escape.

Or perhaps it is all of those things. Either way, I feel some of the criticisms levelled at this film by some of the negative reviews are unfair.

Some have pointed out that we see here none of the genius-level plotting and planning that the comic books lead us to expect from the Joker (who usually plays Moriarty to Batman's Sherlock) which is true, in this version Joker falls into his insanity and criminality almost by accident, and is more a (fairly) dumb victim than an active agent of his own destiny. However, if this is all a day-dream or even a psychotic fantasy Joker develops for himself to justify in his own mind his heinous actions, then this totally makes sense.

Some have pointed out the dark and depressing nature of the film. Well, look around yourself at the moment. Films reflect the times they are made, and let's face it; we are living in dire circumstances.

Some have criticised the simplicity and shallowness of the story, well, as a character study you do not need the most riveting plot (just look at the excellent Withnail & I) you need an interesting character/s to explore. We certainly have that!

Some, perhaps most fairly, have criticised how, apart from the few vague references to Gotham and the Wayne family this could be a story about anyone, not really specifically about the Joker...well I believe that is partly the point. There but for the Grace of God Go I kind of thing...

Some have criticised how crowbarred the moments of interaction with the Wayne family into the plot are, but again, if this is a deluded fantasy of a man in Arkham, perhaps even after he has been put there by Batman (after all even though the film seems to be set in the 70s, at the end when he clearly is in the institute, we could be at any time, and the time period could just be part of his fantasy) this is perhaps just an articulation of how his fixation with Bruce Wayne developed.

For me, the only way this film is not a straight ten out of ten, is because as it is so referential to the works of Martin Scorsese mentioned above one cannot but help compare this film with the work of that great director, and, as wonderful as this film is, it is not quite as accomplished as a Taxi Driver, a Goodfellas or a Casino...however, as a gateway for new cineastes to step into those superior works, I for one will forever be grateful for the existence of this fine film.

At its core, this film is well shot, well-constructed, and features one of the best central performances from an actor I have seen in years. Apart from the constant clever references to Charlie Chaplin and the clear love letter to Scorsese, this film works best as a concentration on the ability of Phoenix to bend his face, voice and entire body into a perfect canvas to paint a work of art on. This performance is pure, raw, measured, superb beyond my imagining. Wow is an appropriate word.

The end of the film is pure perfection, our lead character happily walking into the sunset (sort of) and dancing a jubilant jig, chased, very much like Chaplin's Tramp, by uncaring figures of authority, whom he seems to be leading a merry dance. Unlike the last film with Chaplin's Tramp, Modern Times, referenced visually in Joker, instead of the Tramp and the Gamin walking into the sunset determined to not be bowed by the dire circumstances they find themselves in, renewed with a fresh sense of hope in their faith and love for each other, Joker's equivalent dance into the sunset is rather his full acceptance of his insanity, and his commitment to revel in the horror of it.

To top it all off, for a 'relatively small' character-and-dramatic driven film to become the most profitable comic book adaptation ever is brilliant, and gives me a renewed sense of hope for the future. Maybe this is the way for D.C./Warner Bros. instead of trying to copy the big budget all out visual spectacle of the shared universe of Marvel, make small, tight, well made character driven pieces...after all, many of the characters in the D.C. universe are well worth such introspective examination.

If you haven't seen this film yet at the cinema, and it is still on anywhere near you, go see it now, really, I urge you, and you never know, you might just save cinema...

I remember absolutely adoring this show, however, apart from the Kenneth Williams voiced robot on wheels (which I seem to recall looked a little like the centre of the Tardis from Doctor Who) I remember very little about the characters.

I recall it being fairly modestly budgeted, however, the script was really funny (although bear in mind I was only a young-un so it may well be nostalgia clouding my memory) one particular episode sticks out in my mind where the captain gets changed into a can of soft drink (for reasons I can no longer recollect) and one of the other crew accidentally drink a bit of him, when returned to human form he has permanently lost some vital part of his memories.

In conclusion, much better than Rent-A-Ghost.

Pornographic films, by the nature of the way their target audience consumes them, and in turn by the production values and intentions of those making them, tend to be, by and large, disposable and ephemeral products.

They also tend to be completely disregarded as forms of art. There are very few pornographic films which are regarded as rising above (no pun intended) the dross. Films like Deep Throat, Debbie Does Dallas and now, I contest, Spunk Fiction, do so.

Spunk Fiction is the tale of an over-stressed erotic fiction writer (Jimmy Grossman), who has, in order to stay awake for long hours and finish his literary magnum opus, taken to the extreme and desperate measure of drinking a ghastly cleaning product called Specs. The writer has become heavily addicted to the vile green chemical, and begins to hallucinate strange sexual fantasies. We jump in and out of these fantasies, and into sequences from the book he is writing, which in dizzying harmonious resonance with the main plot of the film, is about a dyslexic erotic fiction writer (Clark W), who writes (in amusingly mangled prose) of his own ridiculous sexual encounters.

This narrative is conveyed to us through an inspired combination of voice over and complex on screen graphics. This film is in turns hilarious, frightening, suspenseful and erotically charged. It does many interesting and unusual things, which porn should not really do, and in the process of pushing outside the boundaries of the genre, establishes itself as an original and artistic masterpiece.

For instance, the main character is ultimately killed by the culmination and embodiment of his most fervent sexual fantasies into the form of a sadistic super vixen. She strangles him as they have sex, and he is killed before he can ejaculate. An astonishing and shocking ending to a phenomenal tale. But as the rules of porn demand the final 'money shot' we do get it, but only after the end credits have rolled, technically therefore outside of the narrative of the film. A disembodied ejaculation, presumably taking place in whatever twisted afterlife Grossman's troubled writer finds himself in.

My praise, no matter how considered, cannot convey to you the genius of this film, and there is so much I have not told you, so many surprises and clever jokes to delight you, and hold your attention for a much longer duration than almost any other erotic film could. Most consumers of pornographic DVDs find themselves skipping through the slim story elements to get to the sex, however, with Spunk Fiction you are truly more likely to find yourself skipping through the sex scenes to get to the plot points (and that is in no way to denigrate the allure of the eroticism in this film, it is simply a ringing endorsement of the effort that has been put into the story line on display here).

As the wonderful tag-line sums it all up much better than I can;

"When words fail; F**k".

This pilot is a perfectly pitched piece of unpretentious p##s taking pointing a particularly ironic finger in the pie of porn.

Alliteration.

Coming (no pun intended, apart from the fact that I meant it) from people who actually work in the industry, and starring some of the rising (no pun intended, only I meant that too) stars of the Viv Thomas staple, this is a much more powerful slit-com than something written by those outside the industry looking at it only as a source of cheap laughs.

Can you believe a major TV station turned this pilot down? If you want to see some more work from these genial geniuses please type The Visa Inspector into the tube of the you.

I came upon (no pun...oh forget it) Only Blue by accident and am now a firm (...leave it) fan.

It is really worth noting that this is the first film 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano made outside of Japan, and was in fact a co-production with American studios.

I believe it was Mark Kermode who made a really good point about this film, he compared it to a Jackie Chan Hollywood film that was out at the time. Kermode noted that both Jackie Chan and Kitano play 'fish-out-of-water' characters in their respective films, but whilst Chan's character comes to the US from Hong Kong and initially doesn't really fit in but becomes more American by the end of the film, Kitano's character comes to the US from Japan, and becomes increasingly more Japanese as the film goes on. He not only doesn't fit in, but he allows his 'fish-out-of-water' status to reaffirm his identity.

That is not to sat that he doesn't make friends, and that is, in fact, the main theme of the story. He finds true friendship and identification with someone who, initially, seems to be his polar opposite, a young black American, a small time hood. This film emphasises the point that whilst culturally people from another country may be very different, there can still be a connection, bond and respect formed between them.

Essentially this film can be viewed as a counter-point to Kitano's earlier masterpiece Sonatine, and just as with that film, the plot is basically a man going on a long detour before committing suicide. As with Sonatine, during this detour, the main character and more importantly the audience, learn some valuable lessons about life.

This is a landmark film for many reasons, and although it is rough around the edges, I urge everyone to at least watch it once, and then watch the story of the making of this film, Baadasssss! (A.K.A. How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Your Ass), made by the directors son, Mario Van Peebles.

It is very easy for a modern audience to perhaps overlook this film as one of the slew of 'Blaxpliotation' films produced in the 70s, however this stands out firstly as virtually the originator of that mode of films, and as a crusade for a young, talented black artist and director to make a film that is both honest and challenging about the representation of black people in cinema.

If nothing else you must respect Melvin Van Peebles for the Guerrilla film making techniques that created this movie.

This film is a great argument for the importance to minority groups within any society to gain access to and control of media production in order to challenge dominant ideologies and representations put forward in mainstream media.

It is also virtually impossible to view Baadasssss! without a tear coming to your eyes, so difficult and harrowing was Melvin Van Peebles journey to get this film made.